Team USA proved their doubters wrong as they bagged the gold medal in the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup in Spain with a convincing 129-92 win over Serbia on Sunday in Madrid.
Kyrie Irving was the brightest among the stars as he finished with 26 points on 10-for-13 shooting from the field and 6-for-6 clip from beyond the arc, helping USA defend their world title.
James Harden racked up 23 points on 8-for-11 shooting from the field, while Kenneth Faried and Klay Thompson added 12 points apiece. Rudy Gay and DeMarcus Cousins added 11 points each with the latter grabbing nine rebounds for the American side.
"I think the results were dominant, but we had spurts of dominance in a lot of games," Mike Krzyzewski said. "And we had tough games and then all of a sudden we'd have a spurt and it looked like we dominated. Tonight we had like about a 35-minute spurt."
USA was hardly threatened for the entire match as they immediately built a commanding 35-21 lead after the first period, and increased their lead to 26 points at the half. They never looked back from then on en route to an easy win, which officially silenced their critics.
Most analysts questioned the team's ability to win the gold medal without established superstars like LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul Blake Griffin and Kevin Love.
The mighty Americans defeated their opponents by an average margin of 32.5 points. The lowest winning margin is 21 points against Turkey.
"It kind of was, again, a smack to our face, saying the U.S. was sending the B-team to go play in the World Cup," Faried said. "Just because LeBron [James]'s not here, Kobe [Bryant]'s not here, [Kevin] Durant's not here, doesn't mean anything. We can step up and win the gold, too. That's what we did tonight."
Nemanja Bjelica and Nikola Kalinic, on the other hand, had 18 points each for Serbia, while Bogdan Bogdanovic and Milos Teodosic finished with 15 and 10 points, respectively.
Watch the highlights of all matches and all FIBA World Cup 2014 games on this link.
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